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I admit it, I struggle with the resurrection. There I said it. What isn’t there to struggle with though. A man beaten to a pulp, flesh torn from His body, the horrific loss of blood, the agony of hands and feet being nailed to two large beams of wood and then being hung naked to die an agonizing death of suffocation by the very weight of His own body. That is not the hard part. As horrible as that is, it is believable. The unbelievable (and the miraculous) come when we take into account what happened after the crucifixion.

According to the Bible, Jesus was dead for 3 days and then rose back to life. And not just a so-so life in need of extreme medical attention, but rather a glorious life. A life that was and still is unmatched in all of human history.

This is where the unbelief comes in. Is it really believable and reasonable for us to believe in a resurrected Jesus Christ. Or, was this a story that got out of hand and grew and expanded into something more than it really is?

In their concise yet impactful book, “Raised?”, Jonathan Dodson and Brad Watson help the reader tackle this question. A unique aspect of this book, is that the authors encourage doubt. They promote doubt as a vehicle to belief. Supporting the claim that the resurrected Jesus of the Gospels is audacious, they say that being a doubter puts us in good company. Many of the strongest believers began as hard core doubters. A main point of the book is that Christ welcomes and encourages our doubt so that He may use it to prove who He is to us.

This is a good book for a beginner apologist. It is small enough not to be overwhelming and much of the language is more conversational than academic. The authors are both pastors and therefore write from that perspective. This will be an excellent resource for pastors & church leaders to give to seekers, new Christians and long time believers. All will benefit and hopefully be led to a deeper relationship with the resurrected Christ.

It’s a place filled with magic and lore. Strength is shown in weakness. Wisdom is given in unconventional and untimely ways. The land is magical and full of hobbits, wizards, warriors and orcs. Of Course I am talking about the magical realm that Tolkien created for all readers in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series. Tolkien was a master story teller. When one reads his work, it like drinking cold water on a really hot day. You feel refreshed but still thirst for more.

Tolkien’s biography by Mark Home introduces us to the man behind the magic. Here we see Tolkien as he lives day to day. We see there was more to him than the stuff of legends. He was a real man who lived a very real life.

Tolkien was obviously a man of faith and his work are influenced by those convictions and beliefs. No one can take for granted the Christian undertones in Lord of the Rings. Whatever one’s faith, Tolkien matches it in a shocking way.

I enjoyed getting a chance to read more about Tolkien. This book is part of the Christian Encounters series. If you are looking for a good place to start reading up on Tolkien, may I suggest this short work.

Sabbath by Dan Allender is part of an eight title series termed “Ancient Practices”. The series hopes to reconnect the raw search for God through the re-examination of ancient faith practices, such as the Sabbath, Fasting, and regular, fixed time prayer.

The book seeks to answer a very important question, “What would you do for twenty four hours if your only concern was to pursue your deepest joy?” The answers to that question are limitless, but weighty. However, I think Allender may have missed the mark. The question should be what would we do with those 24 hours to pursue God’s deepest joy. Like many books, the focus is on humanity, rather than on God.

A look through the book will show a few shortcomings. One, is the lack of scripture used. There is not much used to support what is said. This leads the reader to be even more careful in absorbing what Allender says. Another is the influence of Moltmann. While much can be learned from Jurgen Moltmann, when a book seems to quote or draw from any one theologian extensively, one should again proceed with caution.

Overall, the book is a short read and handsomely marketed. I applaud the series for the fact of bringing back some much needed footholds in a faith that seems to be at odds with its roots. The book does include a built in study guide to help the reader go deeper in his understanding of it message.

Marriage is hard. Plain and simple, no holds barred…marriage ain’t easy. Selfishness, laziness, possessiveness, and pressures all factor into what makes marriage a matter of the heart. With an astronomical number of marriages breaking up and ending in divorce (both within and outside the Christian culture), divorce is the number one killer of marriages. To many, getting out is much easier and more fruitful than putting in the effort and strain of fixing and focusing on their current marriage.

I would like to share with you a resource I received from Crossway entitled, “No Ordinary Marriage”. As the title suggests, the goal of Christian marriage is to extra-ordinary. Extra ordinary in that marriage is for God’s glory and pleasure more than for our own.

So the natural question is, how do we make our marriage that way?

First, as Savage presents, husband and wife must know their responsibilities and duties within the marriage and perform them joyfully and purposefully for the Lord. Second, they must realize they are not two people living together. Instead, they are one spirit fused from two. Third, they must live for something greater than themselves. Savage calls this cruciform love and single heartedness. Living for and because of God’s glory will focus the couple on having a God honoring and Christ exalting marriage.

This is a good resource book for pastors, lay leaders, counselors and couples. The goal of marriage must be more than to sustain, it must be to glorify God!

A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns its back on you and remains a friend. ~Author Unknown

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy. ~Edward P. Morgan

The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it. ~James Bryce

Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book. ~Author Unknown

A good book should leave you… slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it. ~William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read. ~G.K. Chesterton

Many people, other than the authors, contribute to the making of a book, from the first person who had the bright idea of alphabetic writing through the inventor of movable type to the lumberjacks who felled the trees that were pulped for its printing. It is not customary to acknowledge the trees themselves, though their commitment is total. ~Forsyth and Rada, Machine Learning

If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. ~Toni Morrison

A good book has no ending. ~R.D. Cumming

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. ~Anna Quindlen, “Enough Bookshelves,” New York Times, 7 August 1991

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. ~Charles W. Eliot

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. ~P.J. O’Rourke

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. ~Attributed to Groucho Marx

I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book. ~Groucho Marx

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. ~Mark Twain, attributed

A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins. ~Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia, 1833

Let books be your dining table,
And you shall be full of delights
Let them be your mattress
And you shall sleep restful nights.
~Author Unknown

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things. ~George Robert Gissing

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. ~Chinese Proverb

There’s nothing to match curling up with a good book when there’s a repair job to be done around the house. ~Joe Ryan

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. ~William Hazlitt

My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter. ~Thomas Helm

A dirty book is rarely dusty. ~Author Unknown

As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate! ~William James

You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend. ~Paul Sweeney

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. ~Oscar Wilde

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. ~Franz Kafka

Lord! when you sell a man a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night – there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book. ~Christopher Morley

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all. ~Abraham Lincoln

The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television. ~Andrew Ross

I’ve never known any trouble that an hour’s reading didn’t assuage. ~Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu, Pensées Diverses

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations – such is a pleasure beyond compare. ~Kenko Yoshida

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. ~Jessamyn West

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves. ~E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951

TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they’ll have with twenty-six. Open your child’s imagination. Open a book. ~Author Unknown

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. ~Logan Pearsall Smith, Trivia, 1917

Books had instant replay long before televised sports. ~Bern Williams

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list. ~John Aikin

In reading, a lonely quiet concert is given to our minds; all our mental faculties will be present in this symphonic exaltation. ~Stéphane Mallarmé

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. ~James Russell Lowell

Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled “This could change your life.” ~Helen Exley

There is a wonder in reading Braille that the sighted will never know: to touch words and have them touch you back. ~Jim Fiebig

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum. ~Elbert Hubbard

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ~Mark Twain

A book is to me like a hat or coat – a very uncomfortable thing until the newness has been worn off. ~Charles B. Fairbanks

If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions. ~Author Unknown

Books are the glass of council to dress ourselves by. ~Bulstrode Whitlock

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Reading means borrowing. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms

Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life. ~Jesse Lee Bennett

Book lovers never go to bed alone. ~Author Unknown

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. ~Harper Lee

The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value. ~Washington Irving

When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before. ~Clifton Fadiman

For friends… do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble. ~Francis Bacon

A book that is shut is but a block. ~Thomas Fuller

In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. ~Thomas Carlyle

There are books so alive that you’re always afraid that while you weren’t reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book? ~Marina Tsvetaeva

The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived. ~Howard Pyle

No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books. ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Medicine for the soul. ~Inscription over the door of the Library at Thebes

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time. ~E.P. Whipple

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice… and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart. ~Gilbert Highet

“Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are” is true enough, but I’d know you better if you told me what you reread. ~François Mauriac

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. ~Joseph Brodsky

Books are embalmed minds. ~Bovee

Children don’t read to find their identity, to free themselves from guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology…. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff…. When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don’t expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish illusions. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1978

I divide all readers into two classes; those who read to remember and those who read to forget. ~William Lyon Phelps

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind. ~Charles Dudley Warner

If you have never said “Excuse me” to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time. ~Sherri Chasin Calvo

The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters. ~Ross MacDonald

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them. ~Samuel Butler

I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command. ~Francesco Petrarch

Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one. ~Augustine Birrell, Obiter Dicta, “Book Buying”

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. ~Edmund Burke

The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one’s encounter with it in a book. ~André Maurois

A house without books is like a room without windows. ~Heinrich Mann

From my point of view, a book is a literary prescription put up for the benefit of someone who needs it. ~S.M. Crothers

He fed his spirit with the bread of books. ~Edwin Markham

Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book. ~John Ruskin

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death hath no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever. ~J. Swartz

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counsellor, a multitude of counsellors. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes. ~John LeCarre

Never judge a book by its movie. ~J.W. Eagan

“To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one’s self with the forced product of another man’s brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own.” —Lord Foppington in the Relapse An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people’s thoughts. I dream away my life in others’ speculations. I love to lose myself in other men’s minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. ~Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia, 1820

Far more seemly were it for thee to have thy study full of books, than thy purse full of money. ~John Lyly

The wise man reads both books and life itself. ~Lin Yutang

I like intellectual reading. It’s to my mind what fiber is to my body. ~Grey Livingston

I often derive a peculiar satisfaction in conversing with the ancient and modern dead, – who yet live and speak excellently in their works. My neighbors think me often alone, – and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes – each of whom, at my pleasure, communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs – quite as intelligently as any person living can do by uttering of words. ~Laurence Sterne

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be –
I had a mother who read to me.
~Strickland Gillilan (Thanks, Laurel)

When a new book is published, read an old one. ~Samuel Rogers

He who lends a book is an idiot. He who returns the book is more of an idiot. ~Arabic Proverb

Borrowers of books – those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. ~Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia, “The Two Races of Men,” 1822

The mere brute pleasure of reading – the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing. ~Lord Chesterfield

An ordinary man can… surround himself with two thousand books… and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy. ~Augustine Birrell

Books – the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity. ~George Steiner

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

From every book invisible threads reach out to other books; and as the mind comes to use and control those threads the whole panorama of the world’s life, past and present, becomes constantly more varied and interesting, while at the same time the mind’s own powers of reflection and judgment are exercised and strengthened. ~Helen E. Haines

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. ~W. Somerset Maugham

How vast an estate it is that we came into as the intellectual heirs of all the watchers and searchers and thinkers and singers of the generations that are dead! What a heritage of stored wealth! What perishing poverty of mind we should be left in without it! ~J.N. Larned

Books are a uniquely portable magic. ~Stephen King

That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit. ~Amos Bronson Alcott

The multitude of books is making us ignorant. ~Voltaire

There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book; books are well written or badly written. ~Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. ~Richard Steele, Tatler, 1710

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

One to whom books are as strangers has not yet learned to live. He is a solitary, though he dwell amid a vast population. On the other hand, he to whom books are as friends possesses a Key to the Garden of Delights, where the purest pleasures are open for his entertainment, and where he has for his companions the master minds of all the ages. ~Charles Noel Douglas, “Introduction,” Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical

My imagination doesn’t requires anything more of the book than to provide a framework within which it can wander. ~Alphonse Daudet

Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West. ~E.M. Forster

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from the dead, – from human souls whom we never saw, who lived perhaps thousands of miles away; and yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. ~Charles Kingsley

Let your bookcases and your shelves be your gardens and your pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. ~Judah Ibn Tibbon

One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind. ~Ishmael Reed, Writin’ is Fightin’: Thirty-Seven Years of Boxing on Paper, p.186

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. ~Francis Bacon

Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world. ~Walter Pater

No person who can read is ever successful at cleaning out an attic. ~Ann Landers

That place that does contain
My books, the best companions, is to me
A glorious court, where hourly I converse
With the old sages and philosophers;
And sometimes, for variety, I confer
With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels;
Calling their victories, if unjustly got,
Unto a strict account, and, in my fancy,
Deface their ill-placed statues.
~Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint…. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. ~Henry David Thoreau

To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one. ~Chinese Saying

O for a Booke and a shdie nooke, eyther in-a-doore or out;
With the grene leaves whisp’ring overhede, or the Streete cryes all about.
Where I maie Reade all at my ease, both of the Newe and Olde;
For a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke is better to me than Golde.
~John Wilson

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me. ~Anatole France

A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading. ~Jeremy Collier

Books are immortal sons deifying their sires. ~Plato

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. ~Mary Wortley Montagu

I would never read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it. ~Woodrow Wilson

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution – such call I good books. ~Henry David Thoreau

It often requires more courage to read some books than it does to fight a battle. ~Sutton Elbert Griggs

Many persons read and like fiction. It does not tax the intelligence and the intelligence of most of us can so ill afford taxation that we rightly welcome any reading matter which avoids this. ~Rose Macaulay

Americans like fat books and thin women. ~Russell Baker

What holy cities are to nomadic tribes – a symbol of race and a bond of union – great books are to the wandering souls of men: they are the Meccas of the mind. ~G.E. Woodberry

God be thanked for books! they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. ~W.E. Channing

A good book is always on tap; it may be decanted and drunk a hundred times, and it is still there for further imbibement. ~Holbrook Jackson

A blessed companion is a book, – a book that, fitly chosen, is a lifelong friend,… a book that, at a touch, pours its heart into our own. ~Douglas Jerrold

Reading – the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay. ~William Styron

A large, still book is a piece of quietness, succulent and nourishing in a noisy world, which I approach and imbibe with “a sort of greedy enjoyment,” as Marcel Proust said of those rooms of his old home whose air was “saturated with the bouquet of silence.” ~Holbrook Jackson

‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude, 1870

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate. ~Henry Miller

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you. ~Harold Bloom

One of the advantages of reading books is that you get to play with someone else’s imaginary friends, at all hours of the night. ~Dr. SunWolf, professorsunwolf.com

The book of the moment often has immense vogue, while the book of the age, which comes in its company from the press, lies unnoticed; but the great book has its revenge. It lives to see its contemporary pushed up shelf by shelf until it finds its final resting-place in the garret or the auction room. ~Hamilton Wright Mabie

The time to read is any time: no apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary. It is the only art which can be practised at any hour of the day or night, whenever the time and inclination comes, that is your time for reading; in joy or sorrow, health or illness. ~Holbrook Jackson

I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. ~Lord Chesterfield

This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication. ~Logan Pearsall Smith

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books – even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome. ~William Ewart Gladstone

Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves. ~Jeremy Collier

What is Love? Now before you start the Roxbury head nod, this is not such an easy question. How is love shown and to what degree? Do we all respond to love in the same ways and to certain expressions of love?

Obviously, love is its own language. More often than not, how we respond, act and behave indicates either a plenitude or a lack of love. What co-authors and counselors Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell show us is, this may have to do with how love is spoken to us.

This book deals with children’s love languages and the ways these languages manifest themselves in kids lives. Reading this book will help you better understand why your child acts and responds the way she does. You will also find practical and useful application on how to figure out your child’s love language. The result is a better response and an increased awareness on how to lead and guide your children through the use of their love language.

This is a great resource for parents, teachers and pastors (especially children’s). I would have liked to see more interaction and biblical support, but over all this is a solid and good book.